News

(JTA) — U.S. Secretary Of State John Kerry condemned as “grotesque” fliers that called on Jews in parts of Ukraine to register and pay a special tax to pro-Russian separatists. The fliers’ authenticity and origins are not clear. They appeared last week in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk,… Read more »

(JTA) — Pro-Russian separatists from Donetsk in eastern Ukraine denied any involvement in the circulation of fliers calling on Jews to register with separatists and pay special taxes. The fliers were distributed earlier this week in the city, where pro-Russian separatists led by Denis Pushilin this month took over… Read more »

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (JTA) — Every Friday at noon, my 2-year-old daughter and I rush through the doors of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City here to meet my father for lunch. We are usually late, and the JCC’s Heritage Center, catering to active seniors (and their… Read more »

A policewoman and police car are seen at the entrance of the Jewish Community Center in Overland Park, Kan., following the fatal shootings there, April 13, 2014. (Jamie Squire/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The suspect in deadly shootings at two Jewish institutions in suburban Kansas City made no secret of his hateful views, but nobody anticipated the attack that claimed three lives on Sunday. The shooter was identified as Frazier Glenn Miller, a 73-year-old white supremacist. The attack illustrates… Read more »

“You do not come to Israel to learn. You come to Israel to feel,” said a speaker at Israel Independence Hall. My feelings were so deep and profound that tears welled up uncontrollably often on Congregation Or Chadash’s mission to Israel, March 5 to 12. Let me try to… Read more »

The cast of ‘Olive and the Bitter Herbs,’ (L-R): David Alexander Johnston, Eric Anson, Susan Claassen, Susan Kovitz and Jack Neubeck (Tim Fuller)

Actress Olive Fisher, known for her “Gimme the Sausage” commercial, is a classic New York curmudgeon at war with the world in general and her next door neighbors in particular. Her closed-off life is shaken by the appearance of a ghost in her mirror, but that’s the least of… Read more »

The cast of “Love, Loss and What I Wore,” (clockwise from top left): Avis Judd, Carley Elizabeth Preston, T. Loving, Carlisle Ellis and Carrie Hill.

Five women explore identity and relationships in “Love, Loss and What I Wore,” a play by Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron, based on the best-selling memoir by Ilene Beckerman. In monologues that are by turns comic and bittersweet, the characters recall prom dresses and cowboy boots, parents and lovers,… Read more »

Rabbi Simkha Y. Weintraub

Rabbi Simkha Y. Weintraub, rabbinic director of the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services of New York’s National Center for Jewish Healing, will present at Congregation Anshei Israel’s “Torah and Healing” study session on Saturday, April 26 at 5 p.m. Weintraub, a licensed therapist, will lead “The Taboo… Read more »

Theodore Sasson

The University of Arizona’s Center for Judaic Studies will host “Continuity and Discontinuity in Jewish Culture,” the annual Western Jewish Studies Association conference, next month. Membership in the WJSA is not required to attend the conference. Theodore Sasson, senior research scientist at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies… Read more »

Stuart Mellan

The Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona has announced its slate of recommended officers and directors for the 2014-15 program year. The list of 26 names (see below: Nominees for JFSA officers, board named ) marks a significant restructuring of the JFSA board, which previously numbered more than 100 members.… Read more »

Gilberto Bosques

The 2014 community Yom HaShoah Commemoration, “Diplomatic Acts of Conscience and Courage,” will honor Tucson’s Holocaust survivors and Mexican diplomat Gilberto Bosques. The event will take place on Sunday, April 27 at 2 p.m. at Temple Emanu-El, and will begin with a procession and candlelighting ceremony by local Holocaust… Read more »

Four generations, including Oshrat Barel, director of Tucson’s Weintraub Israel Center (third from right), her grandmother, mother and daughters, celebrate Mimuna in Israel in April 2013.

As a first-generation Israeli of Moroccan descent, Oshrat Barel is bringing a personal touch to “Mimuna! Israeli-Moroccan Nights,” a traditional end-of-Passover celebration the Weintraub Israel Center and Temple Emanu-El will present on Tuesday, April 22 at 6:30 p.m. at the synagogue. The evening will include live music, Moroccan sweets… Read more »

Rosie Eilat Kahn and Terry Allen Perl, JFSA Woman and Man of the Year

The Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona will honor its 2014 award winners at its annual meeting and awards celebration on Thursday, May 1 at 7 p.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. “Feddy’s,” the custom metal and glass awards designed by Lynn Rae Lowe for the Federation, and other… Read more »

Ronnie Sebold

For more than 30 years Ronnie Sebold has been involved with the Tucson Hebrew Academy. She volunteered for 22 years, held two staff positions and her three children attended THA for a total of 19 years straight. Next month THA will honor Sebold at its annual Guardian Appreciation Brunch.… Read more »

Jonathan Ben-Asher

The Tucson Hebrew Academy board of trustees has appointed Jonathan Ben-Asher as interim head of school. To establish a strong transition, Ben-Asher started last week and will assume full leadership of the school in July. Arthur Yavelberg, the cur­rent head of school, is leaving to take a position in… Read more »

Secretary of State John Kerry testifies during aSenate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on April 8, 2014. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Obama administration is sticking with the Israeli-Palestinian peace process for now despite a crisis that has threatened to scuttle talks. That’s the message U.S. officials were peddling as a top State Department team was in the region turning over the engine attempting to restart the… Read more »

Yair Lapid says he would leave the coalition if the Israeli government did not "exhaust all options" in its peace negotiations with the Palestinians. (Elad Gutman)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Israeli Finance Minister Yair Lapid said he supports freezing settlement growth to help jump-start peace negotiations and vowed that his centrist Yesh Atid party would leave Israel’s governing coalition if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were responsible for the collapse of the peace process. In an… Read more »

Manuel Valls, then the interior minister of France, arriving at a state dinner with his wife, Anne Gravoin, Sept. 3, 2013. (Antoine Antoniol/Getty Images)

(JTA) — Even among those who anticipated it, the intensity of anti-Semitic violence that hit France in 2002 was shocking. That year — the height of the second Palestinian intifada — synagogues and schools were torched, previously rare anti-Semitic beatings occurred in Paris and elsewhere, and a new generation… Read more »

A normal to-do list for a 13-year-old probably wouldn’t include a 30-city global headliner musical tour, but Ethan Bortnick is no average Jewish teen. Bortnick’s ability to enthrall audiences with his uncanny musical ear and astonishing talent on the piano has led him to be named as one of… Read more »

Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, seen in the courtroom of the District Court in Tel Aviv on March 31, 2014 where he was convicted of taking bribes when he was Jerusalem's mayor. (Ido Erez/Pool/Flash 90)

TEL AVIV (JTA) — Now we know one thing for sure: Ehud Olmert will never again be prime minister of Israel. Olmert, who led Israel’s government from 2006 to 2009, was convicted Monday morning of taking bribes in the Holyland affair, a scandal involving the illegal construction of high-rise… Read more »